The European agenda seems to have run aground on the Ibero-American Summit of Santo Domingo. Despite the fact that Spain came to the meeting with the hope that the ukrainian war and the condemnation of the Russian aggression were a priority, judging by the speeches of the 17 participating Heads of State and Government, these seem to be non-preferred topics from a regional perspective.
Putin has been for years acting as a prop for various autocrats in the region and China flooding it with investment, which made the attempt to present Europe as an alternative even more difficult.
He tried to do it Former Chilean Foreign Minister Andrés Allamandin charge of the Ibero-American Secretariat, emphasized the opportunity that the next Spanish presidency of the European Union represents for the countries of the region, according to him, an opportunity “to generate a future agenda between Latin America and Europe to work together.”
so will be the Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac) scheduled for next July in Brussels, where, as King Felipe VI announced, a European investment plan for the region will be announced.
While waiting for these promises to materialize, the conversation took other paths in the colonial fortress of Ozama. As usually happens in this type of appointment, comments about the attendance or not of the Venezuelan dictator Nicolás MaduroThey grabbed the attention. Caracas had confirmed his attendance, but at the close of this edition he had not yet been seen in Santo Domingo.
His ally the Cuban Miguel Díaz-Canel was present, who shared the stage at the inauguration with the host, the Dominican Luis Abinader, King Felipe VI, the Chilean Gabriel Boric, the Argentine Alberto Fernández, Bolivian Luis Arce or Honduran Xiomara Castro.
The Cuban delegation, precisely, with its refusal to accept it, prevented the Summit agreements from including a proposal to reform the international architecture that sought to facilitate access to credit for middle-income countries, the majority of those in the region.
So, as concrete results of the appointment, a Environmental Charter or Ibero-American Green Pact, a Charter of Digital Rights Principles and a Food Security Strategy, all under the premise summarized in the motto of this year’s Summit: “Together for a Just and Sustainable Ibero-America”.
The theme of the agreements to be reached suggests that the European claim to establish itself as an alternative to China in the region and get it to add its voice to the international condemnation of the Russian president’s aggression, Vladimir Putinis far from materializing.
One of the first participants was the Chilean President Gabriel Boric who came to the meeting with the aim of engaging their neighbors in the fight against clandestine immigration to their country.
“We all have to be capable of achieving a safe, regular, orderly and humane migration, which protects the rights of the people who emigrate and also the rights and security of the countries that host them,” claimed Boric, who also criticized the Daniel Ortega regime in Nicaragua. He did not hesitate to describe it as a “dictatorship” and censured the withdrawal of nationality from the dozens of imprisoned opponents whom he recently released from prison to send into exile. “It would seem that they do not know that the homeland is carried in their soul and blood and is not removed by decree,” he declared.
Next to Boric, the organization sat his Bolivian counterpart, Luis Arce. The countries of both maintain a dispute over an outlet to the sea that Bolivia claims from Chile.
Arce, for his part, focused his speech on food safety. “Access to a healthy diet should be a right and not a privilege of a few,” said the president, who is facing economic instability in his country these days, where citizens have been queuing for days in front of banks before the growing fears of a great devaluation of the national currency and the difficulties to obtain dollars.
before him, the Argentine Alberto Fernández again criticized the International Monetary Fund and the global financial network, which he accuses of the economic problems of Argentines, which have returned with force in the form of galloping inflation.
“The rates and surcharges that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) imposes on indebted countries are abusive”She complained.
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